Big opportunity for Joe Root

Joe Root really needs to stamp his authority on the England team in this series.

He needs to bring out his ideas and say: ‘This is what I’ll be doing, this is what you’ll be doing, this is how we’ll play.’

He has a big opportunity to do that in a series against New Zealand, because it’s actually quite difficult to watch back home. The time zone doesn’t work.

You feel that, as a player, not as many people are watching the game.

So he has a chance to find his game under the radar, because in South Africa it’s going to be a lot tougher.

I think the fun thing about this series is that New Zealand have a new-found respect from England because of what happened in the World Cup and because of how tight the T20 series was.

It’s not like you’re playing them thinking this is going to be fairly easy cricket, or easier than if you were playing Australia or India.

New Zealand are up for the fight, they’re up for the challenge. They’ve got some magnificent players. Boult leads the bowling and Williamson leads the batting.

But you want people to look back on your career and say: ‘He was as good on the road as he was at home’, so this is a huge opportunity for England.

England must focus on selection over style

There is lots of chat about England’s tempo with the bat, but they need to find the right players before they think too much about that.

Rory Burns has been doing absolutely fine at the top of the order, but they’ve been chopping and changing his partner.

When I played we had Strauss and Cook at the top, and Trott at three. That was incredibly formidable – teams had to get past that before they got into the other batters.

But there was never, ever a directive from the captain or coach about how many runs we want in a session or a day.

Look at the great Australia side with Hayden and Langer. I mean, goodness. They were crazy to bowl to.

Graeme Smith when he opened the batting for South Africa, Kumar Sangakkara when he was at the top of the order for Sri Lanka. Those kinds of players are who you need. The ones who are consistent and get the opening bowlers into second and third spells.

It’s about getting the players that you’re confident in, then the style of play will follow. The best players in the world understand the conditions, they play the situations and they understand what the team needs.

The more experienced you are, the better chance you have of doing that. It takes a couple of years to get yourself the experience of international cricket, the pressures that go with it and the mental toughness that you need to succeed at the top.

It’s a fun place to be when you start playing situations and not thinking about your place. You’re just immersed in it and you start playing your game tactically.

But you have to pick players you’re confident in and give them an extended run, otherwise they’ll never gain that experience.

Ollie Pope reminds me of Ian Bell

I knew Ollie Pope at Surrey and he’s very impressive. The sound that the ball used to make off his bat was very good.

He has a very good reputation in the Surrey environment.

He’s almost Ian Bell-like in the way that he times the ball and the way he caresses the ball through the off-side.

He has also scored lots of runs, so he needs to be given a good chance.

Where he bats depends on what England want to do with Ben Stokes and Jos Buttler.

When I first came into the team I had to bat a bit down the order because Michael Vaughan, Marcus Trescothick and Andrew Flintoff were the senior players. You have to fit in where you can to help the team.

Great to hear praise from Ashley Giles

To read Ashley Giles’ comments over the weekend about me being a front-runner and understanding the way forward in terms of English players playing franchise cricket makes me very happy.

All my issues with the ECB stemmed from me wanting to play in the IPL, to maximise my earnings and to be respected among my peers around the world.

If the ECB was the way the ECB is now I’d probably still be playing for England!

So to see Ashley Giles come out with something like that was tremendously pleasing.

I can only speak favourably about the franchise tournaments, because the IPL and all these other tournaments have given me a very fun life post-cricket.

It’s fantastic to see so many English players playing franchise cricket around the world, because opportunities don’t come if you’re not good enough to be there.

They don’t just throw these opportunities at any Tom, Dick and Harry who walks down the street.

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